Gae Aulenti – architect

Designer who made mark in Italy and abroad

Gae Aulenti forged a career in design
when female architects were rare

The architect Gae Aulenti, who blazed a trail for women in the design world in post-War Italy and went on to enjoy a career lasting more than half a century, was born on this day in 1927 in Palazzolo dello Stella, a small town about midway between Venice and Trieste.

In a broad and varied career, among a long list of clients Aulenti designed showrooms for Fiat and Olivetti, furniture for Zanotta, department stores for La Rinascente, a railway station in Milan, stage sets for theatre and opera director Luca Ronconi and villas for wealthy private clients.

She lectured at the Venice and Milan Schools of Architecture and was on the editorial staff of the design magazine, Casabella.

Yet she is best remembered for her part in transforming redundant buildings facing possible demolition into museums and galleries, her most memorable project being the interior of the Beaux Arts-style Gare d'Orsay railway station in Paris, where she turned the cavernous central hall, a magnificent shed lit by arching rooflights, into a minimalist exhibition space for impressionist art.

Aulenti also created galleries at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Palau Nacional in Barcelona as well as turning San Francisco’s Beaux Art Main Library into a Museum of Asian Art.

The frontage of Milan's Cadorna railway station was
restored in 1999 to a design by Gae Aulenti

She restored Milan’s Cadorna railway station and the adjoining square, oversaw the expansion of Perugia Airport and designed six stores for the American fashion designer Adrienne Vittadini, including one on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles.

Aulenti was born Gaetana Aulenti in Palazzolo dello Stella, in the region of Fruili-Venezia Giulia, a town through which the Stella river passes a few kilometres north of the Laguna di Marano.  At home, she read and learned the piano and it was because her parents had no ambitions for her beyond finding an eligible husband that she was determined to forge her own path in life.  She went to Milan and enrolled at the Milan School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University.

When she graduated, one of only two women in a class of 20, she set up a private practice in Milan and joined the staff of Casabella magazine.

She became part of a Neo-Liberty movement, reacting against the growing dominance of modernism and arguing for a revival of local building traditions and individual expression.

Piazza Gae Aulenti is part of Porta Nuova Garibaldi
renovation project in central Milan

Aulenti's distinctive outlook soon attracted clients, among them Gianni Agnelli, chairman of the Fiat empire, for which she designed showrooms in Turin, Zurich and Brussels. Agnelli became a close friend and when Fiat bought the rundown Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal in Venice, he commissioned her to renovate the building as an exhibition space. She also built a ski lodge for Agnelli in St Moritz.

For Olivetti she created shop windows for showrooms in Paris and Buenos Aires, where with the skilful use of mirrored steps she produced a display of typewriters that wrapped around a street corner and appeared to multiply infinitely.

During the 1960s and 70s, Aulenti designed furniture for many of Milan's major design houses, including Knoll, Zanotta and Kartell, as well as lighting for Artemide, Stilnovo and Martinelli Luce. Her folding chair made from stainless steel and a coffee table made from a thick square of glass supported on four black casters have found their way into museums of modern art.

Her major breakthrough came in 1980, when she was chosen to design the new interior of the Gare d’Orsay, where she tore out the majority of the building’s interior features, in their place creating airy galleries that preserved the original Beaux-Arts features of the old railway station while offering a modern environment in which to give the collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces maximum impact.

The main hall of the Orsay Museum in Paris

In 1997, Aulenti refurbished the dilapidated Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, transforming the former stables into an exhibition space.

She left her mark on Milan, which became her adopted home city, with the restoration of the Cadorna railway station in 1999. 

Aulenti died in 2012, a few weeks short of what would have been her 85^th birthday, having been in failing health for some time.

Two months later, a modern circular piazza at the heart of the Porta Nuova Garibaldi development next to the Porta Garibaldi railway station, featuring a continuous flowing circle of seating surrounding a vast reflecting pool, 60 metres in diameter, was named Gae Aulenti Piazza in her memory.

The Scuderie del Quirinale was restored by Aulenti in 1999

Travel tip:

The Scuderie del Quirinale is a palace in Rome situated in front of the Palazzo del Quirinale, official residence of the President of the Republic. It was built between 1722 and 1732, commissioned by Pope Innocent XIII. It maintained its original function as a stable until 1938, when it was adapted to a garage. In the 1980s it was transformed into a museum of carriages. It was restored by Gae Aulenti in time for the 2000 Jubilee and inaugurated by President Azeglio Ciampi.

Aulenti was commissioned by her friend Gianni Agnelli
to restore Palazzo Grassi after it was acquired by Fiat

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Grassi – sometimes known as the Palazzo Grassi-Stucky – was designed by Giorgio Massari in the Venetian Classical style and built between 1748 and 1772. It is located on the Grand Canal, between the Palazzo Moro Lin and the Campo San Samuele.  It has a formal palace façade, constructed of white marble, but lacks the lower mercantile openings typical of many Venetian palaces.  After it was sold by the Grassi family in 1840, the ownership passed through many individuals until it was bought by the Fiat Group in 1983, at a time when there was talk of it being demolished. Restored by Gae Aulenti, it is now owned by the French entrepreneur François Pinault, who exhibits his personal art collection there.

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Giuseppe ‘Nuccio’ Bertone – car designer

The man behind the classic Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint

Nuccio Bertone (right), pictured with his
 father, Giovanni

Automobile designer Giuseppe Bertone, who built car bodies for Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lamborghini, Ferrari and many other important names in the car industry, was born on this day in 1914 in Turin.

Nicknamed ‘Nuccio’ Bertone, he was regarded as the godfather of Italian car design. His career in the automobile industry spanned six decades.

His father Giovanni was a skilled metalworker who made body parts for cars in a workshop he founded two years before Giuseppe was born.

Giovanni had been born in 1884 into a poor farming family near the town of Mondovi, in southern Piedmont. He had moved to Turin in 1907 and became gripped by the automobile fever that swept the city.

It was under the direction of his son that the company – Carrozzeria Bertone – was transformed after the Second World War into an industrial enterprise, specialising at first in design but later in the manufacture of car bodies on a large scale.

An accountant by qualification, Nuccio joined his father's firm in 1933, although his passion at first was racing cars as a driver. He raced Fiats, OSCAs, Maseratis, and Ferraris.

Through the 1930s, much of the work done by Carrozzeria Bertone was still craft-based and the car bodies finished by hand, but Nuccio understood the need to turn to mass production if the company was to enjoy real success.

Bertone's Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint 

After he took control in the 1950s, his first designs were for the British company M.G., but his big break came in 1954, when he landed a contract to design and build 500 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprints. They were to be given away in a state raffle but generated such interest that, in the end, Bertone built more than 40,000, transforming the company from a small craft organisation into an industrial one.

He went on to produce numerous models for Fiat and Alfa Romeo and for Lamborghini, which were noted for their beautiful design and strong performance.

Bertone’s revolutionary Lamborghini Miura, unveiled at the 1966 Geneva Auto Show, had a centrally placed engine and a shark-like nose that became a common basic feature in many later designs. The Lamborghini Espada and the Countach, and the Fiat X 1/9, were characterised by sleek lines and grills that create an aura of menace. Bertone’s Ferrari Dino 308 GT4 is another sought out by collectors.

In 1971, Bertone received the Italian equivalent of a knighthood for his services to industry. The 1970s and '80s saw the company’s fortunes dip, but it bounced back by creating convertibles from family cars such as the Vauxhall and Opel Astras and Fiat Punto.

Bertone's revolutionary Lamborghini Miura

When Volvo launched a special series of limited-production two-door sports cars in the United States in 1991, they not only featured bodies designed and built by Bertone, they also bore his signature on a plaque on the dashboard.

Bertone, an avid sailor and skier, had a penchant for sharp tailoring and sunglasses. He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2006, nine years after his death in Turin at the age of 82.

In the years after his death, Bertone’s company ran into financial difficulties, eventually declaring bankruptcy in 2014. The name lives on after the licence was bought by a Milan company, Bertone Design, that designs trains, including the high-speed Frecciarossa 1000.

The Civic Tower in the centre of Grugliasco

Travel tip:

Grugliasco, where the Bertone Group was based before its collapse, is a town of some 38,000 residents in the metropolitan area of Turin about 9km (6 miles) west of the centre. The history of the town goes back to the 11^th century at least. The centre is dominated by the Civic Tower, originally built to aid the defence of the town, in time it became the bell tower for the adjoining church of San Cassiano.  The town’s patron saint is San Rocco, credited with delivering the population from an outbreak of plague in 1599. In more recent times, the town was victim to a massacre carried out by German soldiers, who killed up to 66 partisans and citizens in April 1945 in retaliation for a partisan attack on a Fascist division the previous day.

Travel tip:

Examples of Bertone’s designs can be viewed in the Centro Stile Bertone museum in Via Roma, Caprie, a small town about 35km (22 miles) west of Turin along Val di Susa, which was established by Nuccio’s widow, Lilli, who rescued most of the Bertone Collection when the Grugliasco plant was sold. It is now protected by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture as part of Italy’s artistic heritage. Viewing is by appointment (Tel: +39 011 9638 322).

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Alberto Marvelli - Rimini's Good Samaritan

Heroic deeds helped victims of bombing raids

Alberto Marvelli devoted his life to
serving his community

Alberto Marvelli, who came to be seen as a modern day Good Samaritan after risking his life repeatedly to help the victims of devastating air raids in the Second World War, was born on this day in 1918 in Ferrara.

He died in 1946 at the age of only 28 when he was struck by a truck while riding his bicycle but in his short life identified himself to many as a true hero.

He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004.

Marvelli's acts of heroism occurred mainly in Rimini, his adopted home town, which suffered heavy bombing from the Allies due to its proximity to the Gothic or Green Line, a wide belt of German defensive fortifications that ran across the whole peninsula from La Spezia to the Adriatic coast.

As well as giving aid and comfort to the wounded and dying and to those whose homes and possessions had been destroyed, Marvelli also rescued many Rimini citizens from trains destined for concentration camps.

Alberto was the second of six children born to Luigi Marvelli and Maria Mayr. Growing up, he was set a powerful example by his mother, who always kept open house for the poor and regularly gave away food intended for her own family.

In June 1930 the Marvellis moved to Rimini on the Adriatic coast and Alberto, having already embraced the strong values instilled in him by his devoutly Catholic parents, began to attend the Salesian Oratory and Catholic Action group.

Alberto Marvelli was a prominent member of the group
Catholic Action, becoming president at the age of 18

He had a wide social circle - his friends included Federico Fellini, who would go on to become famous as a film director - and enjoyed sport, in particular cycling. Yet he also maintained a strict observance of the rituals of his faith, which included Mass every morning, Holy Communion, and 30 minutes each of meditation and spiritual reading every day.

He was held in such high esteem that he was elected president of Catholic Action for the whole of Italy at the age of just 18.

Marvelli attended Bologna University and graduated in engineering in 1941.  He moved to Turin, where he began working for Fiat, but left after only a few weeks to do military service in Trieste.  In the event, he returned to Rimini after only a few months after he was exempted on account of three of his brothers being already in service

By then he was effectively head of the family following the unexpected death of his father and took a teaching job at a local high school, devoting his spare time to helping the sick and poor on behalf of Catholic Action.

When the bombing of Rimini began in earnest in 1944, ahead of the Battle of Rimini in which the Allies achieved a decisive victory, the Marvelli family moved inland to the village of Vergiano.

German soldiers in Rimini in 1944 before being driven
out by the Allies at the Battle of Rimini

With each report of new air raids, however, Alberto would insist on taking his bicycle and riding the 8km into Rimini to lend assistance to the clear-up operations, giving no thought to his own safety, often arriving with bombs still dropping.

He bought food, clothing, mattresses and blankets with his own money or money he had collected, using his bicycle to distribute it to those in need. Many times, it is said, he would return to Vergiano having given away his bicycle and even the shoes on his feet.

During the German occupation, he made repeated journeys from Vergiano to the nearby village of Santarcangelo, sneaking past security at the railway station and breaking open the doors of carriages into which Jews and others had been herded for deportation to the concentration camps, saving many lives in the process, at grave risk of his own.

He helped many refugees reach the safety of San Marino by arranging transportation to the nearby republic, which remained neutral during the conflict.  When he was beatified in 2004, San Marino issued some stamps commemorating his life.

Once the war was over, the interim authorities entrusted Marvelli with the allocation of housing. Within a few months, he was appointed to Rimini's town council as an alderman and was put in charge of civil engineering as the city began to rebuild.

He also opened a soup kitchen for the poor and, as co-founder of Italian Workers' Catholic Action, formed a cooperative for construction workers.

Marvelli had not expressed a strong interest in politics previously but he became convinced he could make a difference and joined the Christian Democrats.

San Marino commemorated Marvelli with a set of stamps

He planned to stand in local elections and appeared to have considerable support and respect, even from the Communists, whose ideology he openly criticized. He was seen by all sides as an honest candidate dedicated to the well-being of the community.

Sadly, Marvelli never had the chance to serve.  Cycling to a party meeting on a poorly lit road on the evening of October 5, 1946, the day before polling, he was run over by an army truck and died a few hours later without regaining consciousness.

Voting was under way as news of his death spread throughout the city. Many citizens still voted for him, to express their faith in him and respect for him, and he was posthumously elected. Afterwards, his mother agreed to serve in his place.

He was buried in the Church of Sant' Agostino in Rimini.  The Catholic Church has honoured him by marking October 5 as a feast day in his name.

A square at the end of Viale Tripoli has been renamed Piazza Alberto Marvelli in his honour, while the Alberto Marvelli Foundation set up in his name helps fund projects dedicated to the community including the Alberto Marvelli Institute, a comprehensive school in Rimini.

The Grand Hotel on the seafront at Rimini

Travel tip:

Rimini's history as a tourist resort began in the mid-19th century with the construction of the Kursaal, a seafront bathing establishment that doubled as a prestigious venue for social events.  It became the symbol of Rimini's Belle Époque, the period of European history before the First World War, which also saw the town's first major hotel, the Grand Hotel, built near the beach.  Its major development as a resort came after the Second World War and the city now has a population close to 150,000.

Rimini hotels by Booking.com  

Travel tip:

Ferrara, the city of Marvelli's birth, is notable for being a combination of Medieval and Renaissance architecture, its history bound up with that of the d'Este family, whose castle has dominated the centre of the city since the late 14th century.  The most significant legacy of the city's thriving status in the Middle Ages is the Cattedrale di San Giorgio, built in the 1100s, which has a facade that blends Romanesque style in the lower section with Gothic in the upper.

More reading:

Agostina Livia Pietrantoni - nurse whose death brought Rome to a standstill

Saint Giustina - the girl from Padua slain for preaching Christianity

Pope John Paul II - first non-Italian to hold office for 455 years

Also on this day:

1858: The death of Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello - Nun who battled for educational rights for girls


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Gianni Agnelli - business giant

Head of Fiat more powerful than politicians

Gianni Agnelli, pictured in 1986

The businessman Gianni Agnelli, who controlled the Italian car giant Fiat for 40 years until his death in 2003, was born on this day in 1921 in Turin.

Under his guidance, Fiat - Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino, founded by his grandfather, Giovanni Agnelli, in 1899 - became so huge that at one time in the 1990s, literally every other car on Italy's roads was produced in one of their factories.

As its peak, Fiat made up 4.4 per cent of the Italian economy and employed 3.1 per cent of its industrial workforce.

Although cars remained Fiat's principal focus, the company diversified with such success, across virtually all modes of transport from tractors to Ferraris and buses to aero engines, and also into newspapers and publishing, insurance companies, food manufacture, engineering and construction, that there was a time when Agnelli controlled more than a quarter of the companies on the Milan stock exchange.

His personal fortune was estimated at between $2 billion and $5 billion, which made him the richest man in Italy and one of the richest in Europe.  It was hardly any surprise, then, that he became one of the most influential figures in Italy, arguably more powerful than any politician.  Throughout the rest of western democracy, he was treated more as a head of state than a businessman.

A rare picture of Gianni Agnelli (left) with his grandfather,
Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of FIAT, taken in 1940

He became known as 'l'avvocato' on account of having a law degree but he came to be regarded almost as royalty, Italy's uncrowned king.

Inevitably, Agnelli ran into confrontations with the Italian left and the Fiat workforce, most famously in 1979 when he engaged in a 35-day stand-off with the unions after responding to the latest of many strikes by shutting down Fiat's Mirafiori plant in Turin.  Ultimately, it was the workers who caved in, an estimated 40,000 of them joining a march demanding an end to the strike.

Yet many ordinary Italians continued to admire him.  He was the kind of figure many aspired to be, living a playboy lifestyle in the 1950s, when he acquired an enviable collection of fast cars and was romantically linked with a string of beautiful women, including actresses Rita Hayworth and Anita Ekberg, the socialite Pamela Churchill Harriman and even Jacqueline Bouvier, the future Jackie Kennedy.

A stylish if idiosyncratic dresser - he wore his wristwatch over his shirt cuff, for example, and never buttoned his button-down collars - he was also a football fan.  The Turin club Juventus had been in the ownership of the Agnelli family since 1923. Gianni ran the club personally between 1947 and 1954 and continued to own it until his death, often arriving at the training ground in his helicopter to chat to the players.

Gianni Agnelli with his wife, Marella, in 1966.

Agnelli, who was called Gianni by his family to distinguish him from his grandfather, was the eldest son of Edoardo Agnelli and Princess Virginia Bourbon del Monte di San Faustino.

Edoardo died in an air crash when Gianni was 14. Subsequently, he was brought up by English governesses. His grandfather was so determined to supervise his upbringing and groom him for his future role as head of the family he fought a custody battle with Princess Virginia.

Gianni studied law at the University of Turin, breaking off to join the army in 1941 before returning to complete his doctorate in 1943 after Italy's participation in the Second World War ended. Having lost a finger to frostbite on the Russian front, he won the Cross for Military Valour in North Africa but ended the war fighting against Germany on the side of the Allies.

When Giovanni died aged 79 in 1945, Fiat was initially placed in the control of its chairman, Vittorio Valetta. Although Gianni was made a vice-president, it was with his grandfather's blessing that he did not become involved. Shortly before he died, Giovanni told his grandson he should "have a fling for a few years" before devoting himself to the business and reputedly made him an allowance of $1 million a year to spend as he wished.

With houses in New York, St Moritz and the Cote d'Azur, Gianni became known for throwing extravagant parties and kept the company of Prince Rainier and the young Kennedys among others.

One of Agnelli's prized possessions during his fast car years -
a Maserati 5000 designed for him by Battista Pininfarina

But the years of self-indulgence came to an abrupt end in 1952 when, reputedly after a row with a girlfriend, he crashed his Ferrari into a lorry, breaking his right leg in six places. It was that incident which prompted him to abandon his hedonistic ways and take a more active part in Fiat, becoming managing director under Valetta in 1963.

He finally took charge of Fiat in 1966, when Valetta retired, and under his guidance Fiat rapidly overtook Volkswagen, its main competitor in the popular market. New factories were opened in Russia and Eastern Europe.

The economic slump of the mid-1970s hit the company hard. It did not help that Fiat had become to many on the left a symbol of Italian post-War capitalism, which was probably why it was targeted by Red Brigade terrorists. Many Fiat executives were attacked. Agnelli lived for some years under constant guard.

His methods were not always universally admired - to raise cash, for example, he sold 10 per cent of Fiat to the Libyan government, under Colonel Gaddafi - but over the next 20 years he rebuilt the company's prosperity.

He was married in 1953 to Princess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto, who hailed from an ancient Neapolitan family, and although there were rumours of extramarital affairs the couple stayed together for 50 years until he died. Tragedy struck his personal life, however, when his only son, Edoardo, died in 2000 in an apparent suicide after battling with a heroin addiction.  His nephew, Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, who was seen as Gianni's likeliest successor as head of the company, also died young, of a rare form of cancer, at the age of 33.

A huge crowd gathered at Turin Cathedral for Agnelli's funeral

This created a succession problem that persuaded Agnelli to remain in the chair until he was 75, at which point he handed control to his long-time number two, Cesare Romiti.

Agnelli remained honorary chairman until his death in Turin in 2003 from prostate cancer, aged 81.  His funeral, broadcast live on the Rai Uno television channel, took place at Turin Cathedral.  A crowd of around 100,000 people gathered outside.

Fiat is now a subsidiary of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, having been rescued from the brink of bankruptcy by Sergio Marchionne just a year after Agnelli's death, following a failed partnership with General Motors.

The Agnelli family still has a presence in the business. John Elkann, the son of Gianni and Marella's daughter, Margherita, is Fiat Chrysler's president.

The Agnelli villa at Villar Perosa in Piedmont

Travel tip:

The Agnelli family estate, where Gianni's widow, Marella, continued to live after his death, is in the village of Villar Perosa, about 40km (25 miles) south-west of Turin.  The estate has been in the family since 1811.  Agnelli is buried in the family chapel there.

Hotels in Villar Perosa by Booking.com

The vast Fiat plant at Lingotto was redesigned by the
architect Renzo Piano. The rooftop test track remains

Travel tip:

The former Fiat plant in the Lingotto district of Turin was once the largest car factory in the world, built to a linear design by the Futurist architect Giacomo Matte Trucco and featuring a rooftop test track made famous in the Michael Caine movie, The Italian Job. Redesigned by the award-winning contemporary architect Renzo Piano, it now houses concert halls, a theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and a hotel, as well as the Automotive Engineering faculty of the Polytechnic University of Turin. The former Mirafiori plant, situated about 3km (2 miles) from the Lingotto facility, is now the Mirafiori Motor Village, where new models from the Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Jeep ranges can be test driven on the plant's former test track.

More reading:

Why the man who rescued Fiat divides opinion

How Giovanni Agnelli saw the potential of the 'horseless carriage'

The insult that inspired Ferruccio Lamborghini

Also on this day:

1501: The birth of doctor and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli

1863: The birth of politician and playwright Gabriele D'Annunzio

Selected books:

Mondo Agnelli: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Power of a Dynasty, by Jennifer Clark

(Picture credits: Maserati by Buch-t; Funeral by JD82; Lingotto plant by SurfAst; via Wikimedia Commons)


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Sergio Marchionne - business leader

Man who saved Fiat divides opinions in Italy

Sergio Marchionne became chief
executive of Fiat in 2004

Controversial business leader Sergio Marchionne was born on this day in 1952 in the city of Chieti in the Abruzzo region of Italy.

The 64-year-old chief executive of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is credited with saving the iconic Italian motor manufacturer from potential extinction in 2004, when Fiat was on the verge of being taken into the ownership of the banks that were keeping it afloat.

It had suffered cumulative losses of more than $8 billion over the previous two years and a strategic alliance with General Motors had failed. Its share of the European car market had shrunk to an historic low of just 5.8 per cent.

Yet after the little known Marchionne was appointed chief executive at the company's Turin headquarters it took him only just over a year to bring Fiat back into profit.

When Fiat opened a new assembly line at the Mirafiori plant outside Turin in 2006, Marchionne was hailed as a hero.  The inauguration celebrations were attended by politicians of all parties and trade union leaders.  Soon, the new Fiat 500 was launched, tapping into Italian nostalgia by reprising the name that was synonymous with the optimistic years of the 1950s and 60s.

But Marchionne, who had left Italy when he was 14 and learned his business skills in Canada and Switzerland, in time antagonised the more hard-line unions with the changes he introduced to working conditions.

His popularity was not helped when ambitious plans for a 20 billion euro five-year investment in Fiat in Italy, which would have given jobs back to most of the workers laid off during the crisis years, were abandoned. Marchionne blamed the collapse of the European car market.

His standing dipped further in 2014 when he merged Fiat with Chrysler, the American company he had rescued from bankruptcy in 2009, and Fiat became a subsidiary of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, a multi-national company with its administrative headquarters in London.

A 1966 Fiat 500 with its modern incarnation, built
 after Marchionne relaunched the model in 2006

The new company had more employees in North America and Mexico (34 per cent) than in Italy (29 per cent) and apart from fears over jobs for Italians, there was opposition from traditionalists to the idea of Fiat losing its Italian identity.

The company, founded by Giovanni Agnelli in 1899 and always based in Turin, is seen as an Italian institution, an important part of the country's industrial heritage.

Marchionne prefers to describe the company as having many bases, with factories and offices in Canada, India, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Poland and China as well as Italy and the United States. He spends much of his time flying between them.

His global outlook might owe something to his own multi-national heritage.  His mother hailed from Istria, the peninsula in Croatia that used to belong to Italy, and met his father, from Abruzzo, when the latter was serving in Istria as a carabiniere officer.

They moved to Chieti in 1945 and decided to relocate to Canada in 1966, joining relatives in Toronto. Marchionne has degrees in philosophy, commerce and law, is qualified as an accountant and a barrister, holds dual Canadian and Italian citizenship and is fluent in Italian and English.

Before joining Fiat he was chief executive of a company in Switzerland, where he has a home.  He has a passion for fast cars -- he is also chief executive of Ferrari -- and classical music but has managed largely to keep his private life out of the public gaze.  His wife and two sons live in Switzerland.

UPDATE: Marchionne died in Zurich in July 2018 at the age of 66.

The Gothic Cathedral in Chieti

Travel tip:

Chieti is among the most historic Italian cities, supposedly founded in 1181BC by the Homeric Greek hero Achilles and was named Theate in honour of his mother, Thetis. Among its main sights are a Gothic Cathedral, rebuilt after earthquake damage in the 18th century on the sight of a church that dates back to the 11th century.

Travel tip:

The former Fiat plant in the Lingotto district of Turin was once the largest car factory in the world, built to a linear design by the Futurist architect Giacomo Matte Trucco and featuring a rooftop test track made famous in the Michael Caine movie, The Italian Job. Redesigned by the award-winning contemporary architect Renzo Piano, it now houses concert halls, a theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and a hotel, as well as the Automotive Engineering faculty of the Polytechnic University of Turin.

More reading:

Vittorio Jano - motor racing engineer who helped put Ferrari on the map

Enrico Piaggio - man behind the iconic Vespa

Daniela Riccardi - leading Italian businesswoman

(Photo of Sergio Marchionne by Ricardo Stuckert CC BY-SA 3.0 br)
(Photo of Fiat 500s by dave_7 CC BY-SA 2.0)
(Photo of Cathedral in Chieti by Raboe001 CC BY-SA 2.5)




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Vittorio Jano - motor racing engineer

Genius behind the success of Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari

Vittorio Jano

Born on this day in 1891, Vittorio Jano was among the greatest engine designers in motor racing history. 

Jano's engines powered cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari during a career that spanned four decades, winning numerous Grand Prix races.  The legendary Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio won the fourth of his five Formula One world championships in Jano's Lancia-Ferrari D50, in 1956.

Almost 30 years earlier, Jano's Alfa Romeo P2 won the very first Grand Prix world championship in 1925, while its successor, the P3, scored a staggering 46 race wins between 1932 and 1935.

He worked for Ferrari from the mid-50s onwards, where his greatest legacy was the V-8 Dino engine, which was the staple of Ferrari cars on the track and the road between 1966 and 2004.

Jano's parents were from Hungary, but settled in Italy, where his father worked as a mechanical engineer in Turin.  He was born in the small town of San Giorgio Canavese in Piedmont, about 35 kilometres north of Turin, and was originally called Viktor János.

Following his father into engineering, he joined Fiat at the age of just 20 and by 1921 was head of the design team.  Two years later, partly on the recommendation of Enzo Ferrari, then a young driver, he was hired by Milan-based Alfa Romeo, who were keen to raise their profile by becoming a successful name on the track.

They almost doubled his salary from 1800 lire per year with Fiat to 3500 lire per year but it was money well spent.  Jano's P2 car won its debut race in 1924, driven by Antonio Ascari, and gave the company the Grand Prix world championship the following year.

Its successor, the P3, was the first genuine single-seat racing car in Grand Prix racing.  Like the P2, it made a successful first appearance on the track, winning the 1932 Italian Grand Prix in the hands of the great Italian driver Tazio Nuvolari.  By this time Jano was effectively working for Ferrari.  Enzo had switched roles from driver to team manager and his Scuderia Ferrari had become Alfa Romeo's works team, taking over the racing operation completely when the parent company hit financial troubles in 1933.

Alberto Ascari pictured in the Lancia-Ferrari D50

But before he became a Ferrari employee, Jano returned to Turin in 1937 to join Lancia as chief development engineer. Jano was involved in making aircraft engines during World War II but returned to building cars, launching the successful D24 road racing car and then the D50 Formula One car, again for the Scuderia Ferrari team.

He moved to Ferrari in 1955 after Lancia, stunned by the death at 36 of their main driver, Alberto Ascari, during a test session at Monza, stepped away from racing. Ironically, Alberto's father, Antonio, had died at the wheel of Jano's Alfa Romeo P2 during the French Grand Prix of 1925, also aged 36.

Ferrari took over Lancia’s Grand Prix operations and Jano moved to their headquarters at Maranello, just outside Modena in Emilia-Romagna.

At Ferrari, Jano began working on a V-6 engine for Formula Two cars with Enzo’s son, Dino. Tragically, Dino died in 1956, struck down with muscular dystrophy, a year before the engine's debut.

The V-6 Dino engine was a commercial success, used in many of Ferrari's road-going vehicles before it was superseded in the mid-1960s by the V-8 version, which would eventually become the staple for Ferrari's luxury sports car range, from the 308 GTB produced under the original Dino badge in 1973 to the Berlinettas and Spiders in the 1990s, phased out only after the Modena 360 was discontinued in 2004.

Jano died in 1965, a month short of his 74th birthday, from self-inflicted gunshot wounds after being diagnosed with cancer.

Fiat's extraordinary Lingotto factory in Turin, complete
with its famous rooftop test track

Travel tip:

It was during Vittorio Jano's time at Fiat that the company was building its iconic factory in the Lingotto district of Turin, famous for a production line that progressed upwards through its five floors, with completed cars emerging on to a then-unique steeply banked test track at rooftop level. At the time the largest car factory in the world, built to a starkly linear design by the Futurist architect Giacomo Matte Trucco, it was closed in 1982 but reopened in 1989. Redesigned by the award-winning contemporary architect Renzo Piano, it now houses concert halls, a theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and a hotel, as well as the Automotive Engineering faculty of the Polytechnic University of Turin.  The rooftop track, which featured in the Michael Caine movie, The Italian Job, has been preserved and can still be visited today.

Travel tip:

The town of Maranello, 18 km from Modena, has been the home of the Ferrari car factory since the early 1940s, when Enzo Ferrari moved production from the Scuderia Ferrari Garage and Factory in Modena.  Visitors can sample the rich history of the company at the Museo Ferrari, which not only includes many impressive exhibits but interactive features such as Formula One simulators and an opportunity to take part in a pit lane tyre change, plus the chance to be photographed at the wheel of a Ferrari car.  For more information visit www.museomaranello.ferrari.com

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